Transformational leadership is assumed to enhance employees’ creativity. However,
results of meta-analytic research on the relations between transformational leadership
and creativity have fallen short of expectations. The authors argue that, besides leadership
style, the creativity technique that a leader employs is an important means of
stimulating employees’ creativity. In addition, it is assumed that leadership styles and
creativity techniques may have different effects, depending on the measure of creativity
output (quantitative vs qualitative). Therefore, in an experimental setting, the effects of
different creativity techniques (provocation technique vs brainwriting) and leadership
styles (transformational vs transactional) on both quantitative and qualitative creativity
were examined. Results showed that transformational leadership and provocation technique
led to higher levels of qualitative creativity than transactional leadership and
brainwriting, respectively. Conversely, transactional leadership and brainwriting were
more effective for quantitative creativity. The additional benefit of the provocation
technique in qualitative creativity was found to be higher in the transactional leadership
condition than in the transformational leadership condition. Moreover, personal initiative
made a significant and independent contribution to both qualitative and quantitative
creativity. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.